CROATIA drew 2-2 with Albania in the second round of the European Championship. After a very poor first half by Croatia, the Albanians led 1-0, and Zlatko Dalić’s team turned the score around within two minutes in the second half. However, Croatia failed to maintain the lead and conceded a goal in the 95th minute, resulting in a shared point. Croatia’s captain Luka Modrić spoke to the media after the match. Here’s what he had to say.
Modrić: I don’t know why we pulled back in the last 5-10 minutes
“We weren’t ourselves in the first half. Again, we started the match poorly, they scored that goal, and it was difficult to play. In the second half, the coach made some changes, and it was very good until the last 5-10 minutes when, for reasons unknown to me, we pulled back and allowed them to create a few chances from disorder and score a goal,” he began, continuing:
“The second half was good; that’s how we need to play. I repeat, after the goal, we started rushing and losing the ball pointlessly. After that, we didn’t press anymore, we left them space, and they were able to punish us, which they eventually did.”
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“We believe we can win in the last round”
“The substitutions certainly brought a change, and we came out much more engaged and combative. We pressed well, didn’t let them break out, and the second balls were ours. That was the main difference,” he stated and added:
“We depend on tomorrow’s result, but we have to win no matter what, and we’ll see what happens. We have no other options. We believe we can do it if we play like we did in the second half, or even better, because we surely can. It will be a very tough match. Italy is a great team, they have an excellent coach, and they are very well organized. We’ll have to be even better than we were today in the second half.”
“We’ll do an analysis and see what we need to improve. We’re certainly not happy with how we started the match, and we’ll have to change something so that we don’t have to chase the result again. That’s never pleasant, although today we showed that we can come back from a negative result. It’s a shame we pulled back in those last five minutes and allowed Albania to score. Everything still depends on us; we know what we need to do, and we believe we can achieve it,” concluded Modrić.